Technology

Bank of America says its artificial-intelligence assistant isn't likely to listen in on private conversations the way Amazon.com's Alexa did last month.

Banks are making business customers happy with new digital billing services as machine learning meets the lockbox.

One thing is clear: This outage, however brief, undermines the card networks' ability to market themselves as the fundamental platforms for a new era of payments technology.

Incumbent bank wires and checks, for example, carry slow settlement times and poor exchanges rates, while some newer fintech alternatives lack the interoperability with one another to scale and sometimes prioritize speed over security, writes Peter Shore, general manager of Transpay

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation could serve as groundwork for future U.S. rules, so analysts suggest credit unions at least begin working toward compliance.

Marqeta Inc. may never be a household name, but its behind-the-scenes payments services have attracted plenty of attention. The fintech startup announced Tuesday that it is raising $45 million from investors including Iconiq Capital, the family office with investors including Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s investment bank.

Financial institutions can improve monitoring of suspicious activity and potentially risky customers using algorithms, but they need to treat this new technology with caution.

Julieann Thurlow, CEO of Reading Cooperative Bank, argues that tech-savvy lenders like SoFi can draw in low-risk borrowers with a fast, simple online process.

What advantages will this new system bring to the U.K. payments market? The U.K. has traditionally struggled to find ways to break the major banks’ monopoly on payments.

Fintechs are entering the market to close the time gap in gig economy payments between businesses and consumers. This will fundamentally change business models for banks, according to Lauren Reuf, a research analyst at Nvoicepay.